


Out Damned Spot

by Lauralot



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Communication Failure, Denial, Gen, HYDRA Trash Party, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Sexual Abuse, Past Sexual Assault, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Hatred, Steve means well, but is clueless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-05-31
Packaged: 2018-07-11 07:17:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7035394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lauralot/pseuds/Lauralot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky can't handle how <i>dirty</i> the modern world is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out Damned Spot

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this prompt](http://hydratrashmeme.dreamwidth.org/1634.html?thread=3067234#cmt3067234) on the HYDRA Trash meme:
> 
> _I was thinking, what if post-trash Bucky is actually really disturbed by stuff having to do with nudity and sex, because of the abuse? Even innocent things?_
> 
> _And there's just SO MUCH of it in the modern world._
> 
> _So, he's deeply disturbed just by Dove commercials or Victoria's secret model. People displaying PDA makes him shudder. Porn makes him verge on a panic attack. He won't even shower in the nude._
> 
> _But Steve, who is genuinely clueless as to the whole male rape thing even being a thing (sure, terrible things happen in war, but even then there are rules!), just doesn't suspect that's the cause. He thinks Bucky is just having some sort of culture shock to modern times._
> 
> _Doesn't help the way it manifests isn't a reaction that looks like panic, but more one that looks like embarrassment and prudishness._
> 
> _To add insult to injury, people tease him about it._
> 
> _Until someone (I'd say either Nat or Sam or both) figures out this isn't normal, and they try to explain it to Steve, but he thinks it's ridiculous._
> 
> _But after that he starts noticing things, too (like Bucky not willing to change clothes with him in the room, while they did that a thousand times before the war) and a feeling of dread creeps up on him._
> 
> _Then something big happens and neither of them can pretend anymore (author's choice how) and the secret breaks out big time, with a lot of angst._
> 
> _I'm a sucker for Stucky, but for this story either lovers or good friends is great :)_

Steve barely dodges the book Bucky lobs at his head. It smacks against the wall behind him, the corner of the cover leaving a dent in the plaster. “Jesus, Buck!” Steve hadn’t even seen him come in, although now he’s impossible to miss, scowling and pink-faced in the doorway. Steve spares a glance at the book now lying on his pillows only after he’s sure Bucky doesn’t have any other projectiles at the ready. _The Casual Vacancy_. “What’d you do that for?”

“Why did you give me that crap?” Bucky demands.

“Because you liked Harry Potter?” Which had honestly surprised Steve. He’d figured that between Memory Charms, Dumbledore’s manipulations, and the teenagers acting like teenagers, Bucky would have quit the series within the first few books.

“Harry Potter didn’t talk about kids getting—getting _hard_ on a school bus!” Bucky averts his eyes, face going redder. Steve can heard the metal plates tensing and shifting under his sleeve. “She wrote children’s books before this! Now kids will want to read her other stuff, and it’s _disgusting_. She talked about a goddamn little girl exposing herself, Steve!”

“I think that was to show that the girl’s had a hard life,” Steve says.

“It’s sick!” Bucky’s hands clench into fists, and for a second it looks like he’s about to punch the doorframe. “I’m not reading that garbage.”

“Okay, Buck.”

But Bucky’s already stormed off.

*

“So that was yesterday,” Steve says glumly. They’re outside of Sam’s house, having just finished their morning run, and there’s nothing Steve would like more than come inside and have breakfast and just pretend that he never has to go back to his apartment. “I’m running out of books to suggest to him.” He’d decided to stick with young adult fiction after the disastrous _Game of Thrones_ incident, but most teen books don’t dance around the fact that teenagers have all the same urges as adults.

“I’d say the Bible, but that’d be too racy. Maybe See Spot Run?” Sam shakes his head, wiping sweat away from his eyes. “Seriously, he does know people had sex in his day, right? He doesn’t think the stork’s a real thing?”

“Of course not.” Steve feels a flare of annoyance—Bucky’s having a hard enough time without people making fun of him—but he stamps it down. Sam has every right to be angry with Bucky after Bucky called him a pervert and said he didn’t know how Steve could stand to be friends with him just because Sam had lent him the first of George R.R. Martin’s books. It’s a wonder Sam’s even come back to the apartment after that.

“Sorry,” Sam says. His face softens. “Has he come around at all about seeing a therapist?”

“No.” What little Bucky remembers about psychology seems to be all Freudian, and Steve can still remember the way Bucky’s lip had curled when Steve suggested it. _I’m not going to pay money for some creep to say I wanted to...to_ be _with my mother, Steve!_ “I thought about suggesting group counseling, but...” He shrugs.

“Yeah, that’d go over like a ton of bricks. Super soldier or not, they’d find a way to beat the shit out of him.”

Steve holds in a sigh. He can’t remember the last time he’s felt so completely ill-equipped to handle something, and he went through Basic as a ninety-five pound asthmatic. He’d tried to prepare for Bucky’s return during every spare second of their search for him. He poured over HYDRA files, read multiple Russian language guides, and studied every article he could find on PTSD. He’d expected to find a Bucky who was loyal to his captors, or who couldn’t remember any of his life. Who might wake up screaming or suffer flashbacks whenever a plug sparked in an outlet.

He hadn’t expected Bucky to be such a prude.

Yeah, society’s a lot more open than it was in their day, especially in regards to what mainstream entertainment can show. That had taken some adjusting for Steve too, right after he thawed. But Bucky’s not just surprised; he’s actively disgusted and embarrassed. And the Bucky he knew, the one who owned a few Tijuana bibles and flirted with the models in art classes, never would have acted that way.

Steve’s best guess is that it’s some kind of defensive culture shock. Bucky’s angry at the world, so he’s taking his memories of the good old days and judging today’s society as awful in comparison. Or at least, what Bucky imagines the “good old days” must have been like, because even the nuns at school would have told Bucky to lighten up. Steve’s tried to test exactly how much Bucky remembers, casually bringing up some of the girls he dated, but Bucky had only gone red and snapped that those things were private.

Right now, Steve’s just trying to be there for him until he can open up and calm down. But there’s only so many times he can play Monopoly, or listen to Bucky rant about the underwear ads in the newspaper, or stay inside all day because today’s fashions are too revealing. It’s exhausting, and Steve hates himself for thinking that.

“Hey,” Sam says. “Want a glass of orange juice or anything? Breakfast? We could watch a few episodes of Orange is the New Black.”

Steve’s ashamed of the relief that floods over him, but not enough to keep himself from saying, “Sure.”

*

Steve isn’t sure why he agreed to bring Bucky along for a visit to New York.

Maybe it’s because Tony’s been pleading for Steve to stop by for months now, ever since he started remodeling his tower to have suites for all the Avengers. Maybe it’s because Steve figures Bucky can only benefit from spending time in a building with an AI who can perfectly control what he’ll be able to see on television or tablets. Maybe he’s hoping that seeing Tony might spark memories of Howard, and the person Bucky was before he fell.

“Bucky’s having a hard time adjusting,” he’d warned Tony when he accepted the invitation. “It bothers him, how different things are now.”

“So he’s even more old timey than you?” Tony had asked. “Sounds like fun.”

“I’m serious, Tony. It really upsets him, how...open society is about everything.” That struck Steve as a better way of describing it than saying that Bucky was acting like somebody’s puritanical maiden aunt. “Just...watch what you say around him, would you? For me?”

“Don’t be myself,” Tony had said. “Aye-aye, Captain.”

Things go well for about the first minute of their visit. Tony doesn’t spout off any nicknames or smart remarks—though it looks like it pains him not to—and if Bucky recognizes the AC/DC logo on Tony’s T-shirt, he doesn’t say anything rude, despite having spent most of the ride to New York complaining that everything on the radio these days is vulgar and awful. The introductions to Tony and Pepper go off without a hitch. Bucky’s much shyer than he ever used to be, but he’s kind. He can hold a conversation.

At least, until Tony brings them into a sitting room where Natasha and Clint are having drinks, and Bucky’s face goes stony.

He’s glaring at Nat and Steve’s heart starts to pound. The sight of her must have triggered his Soldier conditioning. He’s remembering either the fight in DC or the mission outside Odessa, and either way, Steve braces himself for a fight, getting ready to dive on Bucky if he even shifts his weight wrong.

“And Bucky, this is Natasha,” Pepper’s saying.

Nat stands up. She’s smiling. Steve wonders if Bucky can see the subtle guarding in her stance. “Hi,” she says. “It’s nice to meet you without a gun.”

Bucky’s voice is like ice. “Aren’t you cold?”

Steve double takes. He’d expected Bucky to try and strangle her. To throw her through the coffee table or tear a painting from the wall to bludgeon her with. The last thing he’d anticipated was that Bucky would glare at her as if she were shit on his shoes because she’s wearing a tank top.

A tank top that doesn’t show a thing below the collarbones.

Nat’s smile doesn’t falter, but her voice is noticeably cooler as she replies, “I’m fine, thanks.”

“I—” Steve begins, stammering. He has no idea what to say, but he has to say something, has to apologize. “He didn’t mean—”

“I’m taking our bags to our room.” Face coloring, Bucky turns around. “The computer can tell me where it is.” Then he’s stalking off without another word.

“I’m sorry.” Steve can’t keep himself from rambling on. “Nat, we’re still working on how he talks to people—he—I’m sure he didn’t mean to—”

“You don’t have to apologize for him,” she says. “I’m a big girl, Steve, I can handle myself.”

But she stares at the elevator Bucky slipped into, and Steve can’t read the look on her face.

*

Steve manages to coax Bucky out of their suite and into a game of cards with the others.

Well, coax is one word for it. Guilt is probably more accurate, given how Steve had ended up snapping, “Yes, Bucky, ‘that woman’ _is_ going to be there, and for someone who’s so keen to live like it’s still the thirties, you’ve sure forgotten how to treat a lady.”

Bucky had actually flinched at that, and there was a pang of remorse in Steve’s gut. But better he hear it now than end up seriously offending someone. Bucky can’t keep projecting his own hang-ups onto everybody else; if he doesn’t learn to get along, he’ll never get any better.

And anyway, it turned out for the best. Bucky might keep blushing and averting his eyes whenever he looks Nat’s way, but he’s not being outwardly rude to her now. And he’s actually interacting with people instead of stomping off to sulk on his own or rant at Steve about how gross the world is these days. It turns out that he’s forgotten how to play poker, so Steve scoots his chair closer to teach him, and the game continues without issue.

For a while, at least.

Bucky’s poker face is better than it ever was, any tension left from the initial introductions has ebbed away, and everyone’s fallen into an easy silence, content to let Tony ramble on about his recent experiences at some sort of engineering conference.

“—just walks up and slaps me across the face,” Tony’s saying. “And at this point I don’t know if I’d passed on funding her project at some point of if she’s a former fling that I’ve forgotten—”

Bucky shoves back with enough force to shift the table. He’s on his feet in a second, his cheeks almost glowing.

“What’s wrong?” Clint asks, bewildered.

“I’m leaving,” is all Bucky says. And granted, that’s better than a lecture about the immorality of casual sex or whatever Tony said to work him up, but that doesn’t make the incredulous stares that Tony and Clint are now directing at Steve any less uncomfortable.

“Damn,” Tony says. “And I thought _you_ were a boy scout.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Steve says. He’s flushing as well now, excusing himself from the table.

Nat stops him before he can reach the elevator. “We need to talk.”

“I know. Believe me, I’ll talk to him. I thought he was doing better than this or I wouldn’t have agreed to come, Nat, I swear.”

“Steve.” She places a hand on his arm, looking concerned more than angry. “Has Bucky talked to you at all about his time with HYDRA?”

“HYDRA?” What’s HYDRA got to do with anything? Rumlow never met a dirty joke he wouldn’t repeat; it’s not as if they’d train their asset to lecture the teams for their filthy mouths. “I—bits and pieces, I didn’t want to pry into that before he was ready. Why?”

“I don’t know what he was like before,” Nat says. “But from the way you’ve talked about him, I’m guessing it wasn’t like this. And I could be wrong—I hope I am—but it’s possible that he’s acting this way because he was sexually abused.”

“What?” A choked laugh forces its way out of Steve’s throat, although there’s nothing funny about the suggestion. But...there’s just no way. It’s not possible. Bucky would have told him. And not even HYDRA would stoop so low, would they? “Nat, no. That didn’t happen. It couldn’t.”

“Things like that happened in the Red Room.” She knows just how to steel her face and voice so that Steve can’t tell if it’s an admission of personal trauma or a generality. “It’s one of the most effective ways to break someone’s spirit. Or for certain kinds of people to amuse themselves.”

“He’s not afraid of sex,” Steve protests. He can see how Nat would get that impression, having only seen Bucky storm off. But Steve’s heard him go on and on like a stereotypical old maid. “You haven’t seen as much of him as I have. I know how it looks, but it’s not a trauma thing. It just bothers him that society’s changed so much, that’s all.”

But Nat doesn’t look like he’s convinced her, and the explanation sounds rushed and weak to his own ears. “Trauma doesn’t always manifest the same way,” she says. “Like I said, I hope I’m wrong. But has he talked to anyone? He needs to, even if it’s nothing to do with that.”

“I know.” Steve presses the button for the elevator. “Believe me, I’m working on it.”

But now he can’t shake the nagging feeling that he’s been coming at this completely the wrong way.

*

The feeling lingers into dinner.

Bucky wouldn’t come back to finish the card game. He’d scowled when Steve asked and muttered something that he’d refused to repeat. Steve was pretty sure that he’d referred to Tony as a ‘repulsive pervert.’ 

Steve had worried that Bucky would refuse to come out for the rest of the night, if not the rest of the trip. But it hadn’t taken any nudging at all to get him to the table. Steve had only said “I’m going to get dinner,” and Bucky had given him an apologetic look and followed after.

Apologetic, Steve tells himself. Not guilty. Steve hadn’t snapped at Bucky this time, hadn’t lectured him about etiquette. Which means Bucky chose to come of his own free will. Which means conversations that might cover sex can’t be a trigger for him, or he wouldn’t have come down. Right?

Steve can’t focus on the meal, no matter how good it tastes. Pepper’s telling them about where in France their private chef had studied, but her words seem distant and indistinct. Nat’s wearing a different shirt now, a sleeved one that reaches up to her neck. She didn’t need to do that. It’s not like that.

It can’t be.

Bucky was a weapon. And bile may rise in Steve’s throat every time he thinks of how his friend was frozen and tortured, but those things make a sick sort of sense. They needed a perfect soldier, a blank slate. Wiping his mind, keeping him from aging, and forcing him to fight until he couldn’t stand all aided in that goal.

Rape didn’t.

It was just cruelty for cruelty’s sake. HYDRA, for all its evil, had goals. Twisted values that they believed would lead them to their better world. Steve can’t imagine raping their own weapon would fall into even their ethical code.

_It’s one of the most effective ways to break someone’s spirit_.

They had the chair. They wouldn’t have needed to break him.

_Or for certain kinds of people to amuse themselves_.

Across the table, Bucky smiles at something Pepper said. It’s a small, shy smile, and almost as soon as he’s done it, he covers his mouth with his hand. Bucky never used to be so shy. Never used to hide his feelings.

Steve’s hands clench under the table. It doesn’t mean Bucky was assaulted. He’s changed so much. Smiling differently doesn’t mean he’s afraid to show his real feelings. It doesn’t mean he acts embarrassed because he might be punished if he expresses horror.

Because if that’s true, it means Steve’s let him suffer for months. And Steve’s been _annoyed_ with him for being traumatized. Snapped at him for it. Even teased him, a few times. Steve’s throat feels dry now, tight. No, he couldn’t have missed that. He could never be so insensitive, so blind.

But he’d been blind enough to miss that his own STRIKE team was full of HYDRA agents who knew that his best friend was locked in a freezer.

Steve reaches for his glass of water and knocks it over instead.

The water spills over the tabletop, away from Steve. It starts dripping over the opposite edge, onto Bucky’s lap. Bucky’s trying to push his chair back just as Pepper gets up with her napkin to clean the mess. “It’s all right, I’ve got it.”

It happens in a second.

Pepper’s bracing herself against the table with one hand , leaning forward as she mops at the spill, but that hand slips on the wet wood and she ends up brushing against Bucky, her chest level with his face. She rights herself almost instantly, and it would be nothing. It would be funny, if not for Bucky’s reaction.

He shrieks. There’s another splash of water as Bucky smashes his own glass against the side of the table. He knocks his chair back as he tries to get away and he trips over it, sprawling on the carpet.

“Bucky!” Steve stands up, but Bucky’s already scrambling, the jagged bottom of the glass still in his hand, thrust out before him as if to warn the others away. Everyone’s on their feet now, which only makes Bucky look more panicked.

“It’s all right,” Pepper tries.

“Stay away from me!” Bucky shouts, and for the third time today, he runs.

*

JARVIS informs Steve that Bucky had pressed the button for the lobby once he got in the elevator. He was trying to run away from the building.

JARVIS had decided, given Bucky’s current respiration and heart rates, as well as the large quantities of adrenaline, cortisol, and glucose in his bloodstream, that it was best if Bucky was not outside unattended in his current state, and had instead returned him to their suite.

Steve doesn’t know how JARVIS can analyze the chemical contents of someone’s blood without a sample. He doesn’t care right now. All he cares about is making sure that Bucky’s okay and not trying to harm himself. And telling Bucky how damn sorry and stupid he is for not putting two and two together months earlier.

Bucky’s nowhere in sight when Steve enters the suite. There’s water running in the bathroom and Steve panics, imagining Bucky trying to drown himself in the tub. He’s fully prepared to break the lock but once he runs into the bedroom, he finds that the bathroom door isn’t even shut. And it’s the shower running, not the bath.

Bucky’s huddled in the corner of the shower, under the spray. He’s fully clothed and his face is red with tears.

“Bucky.” Steve stops in the doorway. There are a thousand things he needs to say and he can’t come up with a single way to start. “God, Buck, I’m so sorry.”

Bucky just shakes his head. His eyes are wide and teary and Steve’s not sure if he actually sees anything around him.

“I’m not mad,” Steve tells him. His voice is strained and thick, as if he’s been the one crying. “No one’s mad at you, I promise. I didn’t understand. Bucky, you haven’t done anything wrong. I didn’t know. I’m so, so sorry.”

“It was a dame the first time,” Bucky says, more to the air around him than to Steve.

There’s a lump growing in Steve’s throat, too big for him to swallow around. “Buck, you don’t have to tell me if it hurts—”

“It must have been in the first year,” Bucky says. “I don’t know. I don’t know how long it took, it felt like I fought them for years and years and then Zola would say it’d only been a few days and I couldn’t _tell,_ I didn’t _know._ But they beat me until I was bloody and broken and threw me back in the cell and then there was this dame who came to clean me up and she...she...I didn’t want to hurt her!”

He breaks off with a shuddering sob and this time, Steve doesn’t interrupt. Not because he thinks it’s cathartic for Bucky to continue—he doesn’t know what to think—but because if he speaks, he’ll be crying too, and he has to be strong for Bucky now. He’s already failed him so much.

“She was cleaning me up and she sat on my lap and her—” Bucky’s mouth spasms and Steve half-expects him to vomit. “Her _body_ was in my face, just like that, and then her hands were on me and I didn’t _want_ it I swear I didn’t but she was touching me and it felt good and I didn’t want to hurt her!”

“You—you can’t help how your body reacts,” Steve says. The words are clumsy and halted and he wishes to God that Nat or Sam or someone _competent_ was here. Bucky deserves that, deserves so much more than Steve’s ever given him. “You didn’t ask for it, Buck. It’s not your fault.”

“I cried more from that than the beatings.” Bucky’s not blinking; the spray of the shower drips into his wide eyes, making the tears spill out all the faster. “And then—it never stopped. It _never stopped_ and sometimes I didn’t even want it to because at least someone was touching me and I’m disgusting, I’m so _dirty_ and I don’t want to be dirty anymore. I can’t take it, Steve. I can’t see anyone or anything without thinking of it and I know you hate me for it but I can’t _stop._ “

“I don’t hate you.” Steve wants more than anything to hold Bucky in his arms until his crying stops. To never let go and never let anyone so much as look at Bucky again, to keep him safe. But it would only hurt him worse. “I’ll never hate you, Bucky. I was annoyed with you, but that’s not your fault. I didn’t understand. I was an idiot and you suffered for it, but you’re not dirty. You haven’t done anything wrong.”

Bucky shakes his head. He shuts his eyes, and Steve’s surprised he doesn’t put his hands over his ears. He won’t come out of the water, and Steve isn’t about to try and drag him loose, not unless JARVIS says he’s in danger of developing hypothermia.

So all Steve says is, “I’ll be right in the bedroom, Buck. I’ll be right here, whatever you need. I love you. And I’ll never think any less of you. This isn’t your fault.”

He’s alone in the bedroom for hours, texting back and forth with Tony and Natasha. Tony, for contact information regarding the best therapists in DC for sexual trauma. Natasha, to try and figure out what the hell he can do.

“Be there for him,” is the advice she gives again and again. But Steve’s tried that, and he might as well not have been there at all.

When Bucky finally comes out, it’s because JARVIS shut the water off. He’s soaking wet, dripping onto the carpet, and every inch of skin that Steve can see is scrubbed raw pink.

“It’s not your fault,” Steve tells him. “Buck, it’s not your fault.”

He’ll say it again and again, until it doesn’t sound like words anymore. He’ll find the best doctors, wherever they have to go. He’ll keep Bucky safe from everything that triggers him until Bucky’s ready to try and face the world again, and then Steve’ll be there to hold his hand every step of the way. Because it’s not Bucky who’s stained with failure and weakness; it’s Steve.

And Steve will spend eternity atoning if it means Bucky can see even once how clean he is.

**Author's Note:**

> The fic title comes from Lady Macbeth's famous monologue in Shakespeare's _Macbeth._
> 
> The book that so upset Bucky at the start is JK Rowling's _[The Casual Vacancy.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Casual_Vacancy)_
> 
> [Tijuana bibles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tijuana_bible) were small pornographic comics made in the US from the 1920s to the 1960s.


End file.
